The Year Course UK Team
Meet your instructors and read about what they are able to collaboratively bring to this unique course offering.
Jamie Dakota.
In recent years Jamie has led the Howl canoe trips in Scotland as well as co-delivered the Borealis Winterland trips to Northern Sweden alongside Adam.
Jamie is passionate about working collaboratively with skilled outdoors professionals he’s honoured to call his friends, and bringing The Year Course to the UK remains a constant source of inspiration and excitement.
“I founded Howl Bushcraft in 2014 as a means to share my insights and passion for the outdoors. Having spent the majority of the last 20 years exploring the woodlands of the UK, I wanted to create a series of courses to allow people to engage with natural world in a very practical way. It has long been my belief that making use of our natural world in a succinct and respectful way can only act to bring us closer to it, and that through thoughtful, concise skills we can disencumber our adventures in the wild."
Thijmen Apswoude.
Creator, owner and chief instructor of Living by Nature.nl Thijmen is affectionately known here to the UK team as ‘our Dutch overlord’…
“If you’ve never done it before, it’s hard to imagine,” Thijmen shares about living by nature “I became conscious. Our place is not where walls of brick and stone keep out the conditions that weary most other people. It is those places where you feel small and at one with nature.’’
Over the past 25 years Thijmen has seen many European, Northern Scandinavian, Canadian, American and Japanese landscapes. For the last 15 Years he designed courses for different environments and scenario’s.
Thijmen has developed several courses for bushcraft schools & company’s in Europe and the rest of the world, he has been a guest instructor for companies and founded his own school: Living by Nature, which nowadays is one of the most outstanding schools in primitive and native skills.
As of 2024 Living by Nature now run Thijmen’s Year Course programme here in the UK employing instructors hand picked for their breadth and complementary depth of skills and experiences.
Sarah Day.
Sarah has been interested in Prehistory from a very young age when a chance find of a fossil at age 5 led to a wider love of natural history, and human history.
A consummate outdoors person, Sarah has worked in the Bushcraft industry for 13 years, Primarily for TV survivalist Ray Mears' company Woodlore ltd. Running courses and teaching outdoor skills.
"A childhood experience can change the course of a life; For me it was finding a fossil on a beach aged 5. That created a lifelong fascination with natural history and human history, and led me to do what I do!"
Always diving into new skills Sarah has a particular interest in plants and their many uses, fibre work, basketry, and the making of tools and equipment from Bone, Antler and Flint.
Adam Logan.
The wilderness living skills and traditional crafts Adam first discovered in books as a boy have defined his entire adult career as a UK based bushcraft instructor and guide.
Honing these skills over 16 years of bushcraft instruction created a desire to gain validity in what he was passing on to students and is reflected in the significant amount of time both living and teaching these skills in the context of wilderness travel and training courses.
‘’Throughout my career as a bushcraft instructor and expedition guide, I have had a growing sense of the importance to convey authenticity in the skills I would be passing on to others. I strive for honesty by teaching only from direct experience and immersing myself in a bushcraft lifestyle. I try to practice what I preach.’’
Adam recognised early on that a central tenet of bushcraft is an understanding of plants and their applications. This has led to a lifelong fascination with the uses of natural materials for outdoor living. Opting for wool blankets over sleeping bags, natural shelters instead of tents, wood fires in place of gas burners and wherever possible handmade clothing and equipment. This has helped to temper his instruction with a measure of realism.
Pursuing ever increasing reliance on nature, a passion for so called ‘primitive skills’ developed and has led Adam to write and deliver many courses on topics including buckskin making, fur tanning, natural cordage and glues, tool making, bow making, bone and antler work, weaving, and bark crafts.
Never truly satisfied with a short trip into the outdoors Adam has spent months at a time living in Sweden’s forests. Over three winter seasons he has cumulatively spent ten months living off grid in the Canadian bush. Working as an assistant snowshoe guide and instructor, he has covered more than 300 miles by snowshoe and moccasins in Ontario’s wilderness areas.